An Ideology of Citizen Participation: The Metropolitan Seattle Transit Case Study

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature that deals with the purposes and objectives of citizen participation1; however, relatively little of this goes beyond the conceptual level of should to is. Only recently have efforts been made to evaluate the effectiveness of various citizen participation programs, to determine and evaluate the validity of their underlying assumptions. Again, most of these studies have focused on the citizen participation efforts in Urban Renewal, Model Cities, and other poverty programs. These evaluations have largely been based on surveys of the administrators and citizen leaders, and have not sought to find out the attitudes of the ordinary citizen participants themselves toward their role in the planning process. Thus, we do not know what role people seek as opposed to the role they play in the planning process; we know very little about the extent to which citizens and planners share congruent perceptions/opinions as to what is the appropriate role of citizens in the planning process; and there is no definitive answer to the question: what is a workable, feasible, and meaningful strategy for accomplishing successful citizen participation-successful from the viewpoint of the professionals, the policy makers, and the citizens. The case study reported in this article was undertaken in order to shed some light on these issues and to define some of the research questions which need to be addressed.2 * The article determines and evaluates some of the underlying assumptions of the concept of citizen participation. It examines the extent to which citizens and planners share congruent opinions as to what the observed and the expected role of citizens is and should be in the planning process. The Metropolitan Seattle Transit Study Citizens' Participation Program was used as a case study. The study reveals certain characteristics of feasible and meaningful strategies for accomplishing successful citizen participation-successful from the view point of the professionals, the policy makers, and the citizens. In the case study, the citizens and the professionals largely felt that the citizen participation program met their expectation, though their expectations differ. The article identifies and discusses some of the limitations of citizen participation in the planning process.